Stand by me
by Wow I really am Trash
Summary: WWI au. "You're never too young to die in the trenches." Pavel Chekov is a baby faced soldier in the trenches, and Scotty takes him under his wing. Inspired by the 100th anniversary of Armistice day. Possible future slash? Any criticism, kind words, or reviews of any kind are welcomed. Note: Chapter 3 re-uploaded to try and fix a bug!
1. Under My Wing

**Remembrance Sunday is coming up here in the UK, and I was inspired. It's probably filled with historical inaccuracy, but hey, fanfic is famous for inaccuracies. Also I'm really lazy? And I hate doing actual research like a responsible person? So please call me out on anything I get wrong.**

 **Disclaimer: you know how many bright blue flying elephants there are? None. That's how much of Star Trek I own.**

This is the war to end all wars, they say. Scotty thinks it might be true, if only because nobody will be left afterwards to fight.

He watches the new lads as they huddle in the trenches, the stink and the horror and the filth a far cry from the glory they were promised. Fight for king, country, and then go home to a beer at the pub with all your mates intact and a chestful of medals.

What a load of horse shit.

His attention is drawn by one of the newcomers, sitting a little apart from the others with his eyes on the ground. The soldier is too young to be here, Scotty thinks to himself. He's all golden curls and pink cheeks and babyish innocence. He nudges the Captain sitting beside him, nodding towards the boy.

"War's robbin' the cradles now, I see."

James T. "Perfect hair" Kirk, or plain Jim to his friends, looks around. "So it seems. You're never too young to die, though. At least, that's what the generals say."

"Still. Bit young fer all this, ain't he, Jim?"

The other shrugs, his attention somewhat occupied by the task of picking a weevil out of his food. "If he's here, he's eighteen, I guess."

"Unless he lied on his enlistment form, o' course."

Jim just grunts vaguely and takes a sip of his tea. "Ugh. Who made this? It tastes like piss."

"That'd be you who made it, Cap'n."

"Ah. Right." He's moody today - Scotty wonders idly why.

The Scotsman picks up his bowl of what could be generously called food and walks over to the baby-faced soldier. "Mind if I sit here, laddie?"

The boy starts, jerked out of his thoughts, and looks up at the Scotsman standing over him. He flushed slightly, whether from embarrassment at being startled or surprise that someone asked to join him Scotty didn't know. "Oh! You may sit here, Meester...?"

"Montgomery Scott, but call me Scotty. Everyone does."

The boy smiles. "My name is Pavel Chekov."

Scotty sits gingerly by Chekov. "Pavel, eh? You from Russia?"

Chekov shakes his head. "My parents moved to England before I was born. I have newer seen Russia."

Scotty nods, more as acknowledgment than agreement, and they eat together in silence before he speaks again. "So, how old are ye, lad?"

"Nineteen, but I look younger." He turns to Scotty, slight amusement playing around his face. "You thought I was younger, yes? Lying on the form?"

Scotty shrugs, unabashed at being found out. "It's happened before. I don't see why, though - this is hell." At the last three words, his voice seems haggard and rough. He's been here several months now, and he knows what he's talking about.

Chekov looks around at the mud and despair surrounding him, at the faces of the soldiers who've been there for longer, at the barbed wire above him, and into the face of the man beside him. It's a nice face, he decides; there's a kindness to it, something that makes this man seem like a friend already. Finally, he speaks, and his voice is smaller than before. "It is really so bad?"

Scotty looks into the face of the young man beside him, open and innocent and unaware of the horror that's waiting. "Worse."

...

It is worse than the stories, a tiny bit of Chekov thinks later on. The rest of him is desperately trying to stay alive while shooting at people he can't even see for smoke. A bullet whizzes by his head and kills the man next to him, and he only realises later that he never knew his name. The blood and the wire and the noise and the muck are all around him, a nightmare he can't shake off. The gunfire is deafening, but he can still hear screams.

Something lands with a thump near him, and he can't even turn to see what it is when someone grabs him and drags him away, around the corner of the trench and he's pressed up against someone. Strong arms wrap around him and he doesn't know what's happening when the whole world explodes.

The noise is deafening and disorienting, and all Chekov can do is bury his face into the chest of his rescuer and stay there until his ears stop ringing. Gradually, his hearing comes back, and he steps away and looks into the face of Scotty.

The other man grips his shoulders, looking into his face with a worried expression on his own features. "Y'alright, lad? The blast didnae catch us, but the noise an' debris can be pretty bad."

The fighting had stopped while Chekov was recovering from the blast, and everything is quiet but for the moans of the wounded and the voices of the medics. Chekov looks around, and feels nauseous. "I-I feel...like..."

He leans over and vomits. Scotty rubs his back in small circles, mumbling softly as the boy is sick. "All right, lad. There, there. Just let it out - that happens to a lot o' lads after their first skirmish."

Once the last of his dinner has left Chekov's stomach, he stands shakily and wipes his mouth. He turns towards Scotty. "You saved me. I vould hev been killed by that grenade." He swallows, the thought of it making bile rise in his throat. "Thank you."

Scotty smiles, and Chekov thinks, impossibly, of angels. "It's no trouble, laddie. We gotta stick together, us lads in the trenches. You sure you're okay?" He asks, gently clasping Chekov's shoulder. The younger man nods. "Thanks to you."

Scotty flushes, oddly shy, and slings an arm around Chekov's shoulders to walk him back towards the others. "Well, as I said, we look out for each other. You stick with me, laddie - Scotty'll take care of ye."

 **Did you like it? Did you hate it? Do you wanna see more? Let me know in the reviews!**


	2. Gambles and Gambles

**Welcome to the second chapter of this fic! I actually did research for this chapter. The army lingo, however, I just pulled outta my ass, so don't read to much into it.**

 **Couple notes: this is an au on an au, meaning that the enemy isn't the Germans but the Romulans. And I'll have a bit more room to do what I want in terms of action, because most of WWI seems to be sitting around in trenches. Go figure. Also this will probably end up being slash, so if that doesn't float your boat, well, you know how to go back.**

 ***insert humorous disclaimer here***

Life in the trenches has a routine to it, Chekov finds. At what Mister Sco - Scotty calls "right before the arse-crack o' dawn", they all sit and peer into the darkness, waiting for the enemy to make any kind of move. It's ice-cold then, the rum ration barely enough to burn his throat. The first day, when he's standing in the dark shivering so hard that he's sure the Romulans can hear the click of his teeth, Scotty shuffles a little closer so that they're pressed up against each other. Chekov warms up too quickly to even think of protesting.

After that, they eat their breakfasts, grateful for the hot food, even if it is some of the blandest stuff he's ever had to force down. Once they've eaten their fill, they tidy the trench, insofar as the muddy ditch they call home could ever possibly be tidy, and then they can rest.

Chekov writes home while Scotty and a Chinese-American man named Hikaru Sulu that Chekov has befriended sit and play cards together. He smiles to himself as he hears his two friends bicker over the game and the prize - a chocolate bar.

Captain Kirk, who had been reading a telegram of some sort in the corner, stands abruptly, the movement distracting Chekov from his book. He wanders over to his second in command and the medical officer, a worried expression on his boyish features.

The medical officer, Leonard McCoy, leans towards his friend and peers into his face. "What's goin' on, Jim? Somethin' bad must've happened if you've got that kinda face on."

The first officer, Spock nods once, his angular features solemn. "I must agree with the Doctor, Captain. What is wrong?"

Jim shakes his head slowly. "They want us to take the village."

Bones tries not to scream. "Are they out of their corn-fed minds?! We've gotta snowball's chance in hell of taking it with one man left alive, never mind the whole company! We be slaughtered!"

"On the other hand," Spock interjected, "It is a position of great strategic importance. Capturing it would be beneficial to the war effort."

Jim turned to look at the soldiers in the trenches, many of whom were watching the trio with curiosity. He murmured, "Yes, you're both right. If we can capture that village, it will really help us get a foothold here."

"And if we don't?" Asks McCoy.

"Well, if we don't, then the army will lose a company."

"Whether or not we succeed," Spock interjects, "we must at least attempt. We have our orders, Captain."

Jim looks up at the watery blue of the sky, his brow creased in thought. "That we do, Mr. Spock. That we do."

He turns towards his two best friends and smiles half-heartedly. "If you would be so kind as to gather the troops, I shall inform them of our orders."

Chekov stands between Scotty and Sulu, watching the captain's face as he prepares to make his announcement. Judging by the look on his face, it's going to be bad news.

"Gentlemen!" Kirk speaks softly, so the Romulans won't be able to hear them in the noonday hush. "We have new orders from headquarters. Starting at dawn tomorrow, we are to carry out an attack on the neighbouring village. We will approach it from the north, and capture it. Any Romulan who surrenders will be treated humanely, and unarmed civilians will not be harmed in any way. Please prepare for the attack - and get some rest while you can." He nods, once, and then gestures vaguely as if to say, 'go on, now '. The soldiers drift off in little knots of quietly chatting groups.

Sulu rubs his hands together. "Finally, some action! Don't know about you, Chekov, but I've been getting a little bored around here."

Chekov nods, but he thinks that perhaps sitting and watching his friends play cards is preferable to dying.

Scotty seems to agree with this sentiment, wrinkling up his nose and shaking his head. "Better bored than dead, lad. Still, it'll be a change o' pace from sitting in mud up to our ankles."

He takes a cigarette out of his bag and lights it, then passes Chekov the light. Before the young man can pass Sulu the light, Scotty stops him. "Best not, lad. Third cigarette's unlucky, y'know."

Sulu frowns. "You don't really believe that superstition, do you?"

Scotty flushes, obviously embarrassed by the tone of disbelief in the other's voice. "Well...I'm not sayin' I do, not sayin' I don't, ye ken? 'Sides, it's no' a good thing, to go temptin' bad luck afore a thing like this." At Sulu's expression, he waves a hand dismissively. "Ach, never mind. Ye don't have tae listen if'n ye don't want tae." His accent thickens when he's excited or embarrassed, Chekov notes, and then wonders why he noticed.

Sulu just rolls his eyes and lights his own cigarette. "No such thing as bad luck. Don't you know the sign?" As if on cue, they recite the official bulletin about worry and bad luck. "You're either well, or injured. If you're well, don't worry. If you're injured, you'll either get better or die. If you get better, don't worry. If you die, you can't worry!"

Scotty laughs, seemingly over his funk. "Well, they're right there, I guess." He settles down where he's sitting and pulls his cloak over his head. "I'm gonna get some sleep. You lads best do the same 'till supper time."

 **Also! Thank you to the guest reviewer, who pointed out that the centennial is next year. Told y'all to call me out if I was a dumbass!**


	3. That Damned Third Cigarette

**My only excuse for the lateness of this chapter is that I'm lazy and sick and I'd prefer to go on Instagram than actually be a productive human. Anyhow, I got it out eventually, so that's what matters, right? Right?**

 **Disclaimer: if I owned Star Trek, Spirk would be canon and Uhura would have her own TV show. As neither of those things are happening, it's safe to assume that I'm not the ghost of Gene Roddenberry (or whoever currently owns Star Trek [wait, can ghosts own things?]).**

That night, Chekov finds himself tossing and turning in his bedroll, unable to rest in either body or spirit. His mind keeps replaying that odd scene with Sulu and Scotty - the third cigarette. Why was that making him anxious? Why does he feel that something terrible was about to happen?

"Chekov?" He starts slightly. He hadn't realised that Sulu was awake.

"Yes?"

He hears the other man shift in his bedroll. "You can't sleep, huh?"

"I...I am worried."

A shift, a sigh. "That's pretty normal for your first skirmish. The best thing you can do is get some sleep."

The advice seems redundant, but it's the best he'll get.

Chekov couldn't feel his fingers that morning for the cold. He hardly dares breathe as they creep through the forest, his rifle held ready and every nerve alight as they move. At any moment, they'll be spotted by a sentry and then the fighting will start, with all the blood and noise and chaos that accompanies it. But until then, they must be silent as they can possibly be.

A shout! A Romulan sentry has seen them, but before he can do more than cry out a bullet has left a tiny black spot on his forehead and he falls. Now here's the thick of the thing! No more crawling and creeping. Chekov is running, shooting, killing the Romulans before they can kill him. He has his orders; Scotty, Sulu, Kyle, and he, along with a few others, are to try and take the southernmost streets. So far, so good; a few Romulans have surrendered and are being held prisoner. Sulu leads them around the corner, checking the street. "Empty," he calls. "Let's go." He walks forwards, and a single gunshot rings out. Sulu falls, and Chekov knows he is dead. Nobody alive falls like that.

He feels a scream tear itself from his throat, and he dashed into the street, hell-bent on finding the Romulan and killing him. Something smacks into his shoulder, but he doesn't flinch. The shooter is sitting in the first-story window of a shop across the street, lifting his rifle to shoot again. Chekov lifts his own gun and shoots him, making him topple out the window and fall with an ugly _crunch._ Chekov shoots again, silencing the pitiful moan, and again, and again, over and over, channeling his rage from his friend's death into the bullets.

"That's enough, lad!" Scotty grabs Chekov's shoulder, jerking him out of the fury that threatens to consume him. "That's enough! He's dead. Dinnae waste your bullets." The Romulan's face is shot to pieces, a mess of blood and bone.

"The bastard killed Hikaru! He _killed_ him!" He turns to Scotty, tears streaking down his face. The Scotsman drops his gun to grip Chekov's arms tightly, trying to ground him in the here and now.

"I know, lad. I know." He, too, has wet eyes, but he shakes Chekov slightly and then releases him, picking his rifle back up and stepping back a little. "You cannae bring him back, lad. But you can avenge him."

Chekov nods, the fury replaced by hatred - for Romulans, for this war, even for death itself. "I vill kill them. Let's go." He can't say much more than that.

The rest of the battle seems blurred to Chekov. It's all screams and gunshots and death, but they win in the end. It feels good in a horrible sort of way, to know that they've killed enough Romulans to make the rest surrender. He feels sick.

He's sitting by the brazier with Scotty that evening, eating hot beans with a bit of precious bacon stirred in, when he finally allows himself to stop being angry and start being sad. It's odd; one minute, he's quietly eating next to the Scotsman and watching the coals glow, and the next, he's sobbing into Scotty's shoulder and asking him why Hikaru has to die.

"War is a pointless, brutal thing, lad," Scotty murmurs into his curls, his breath warm in his scalp. "And death - ach, death is so unkind." His voice breaks a little, and he wraps both arms around Chekov, as if to keep him from breaking.

"You have lost someone?" Chekov murmurs into his shoulder once he has finished crying.

"Aye, lad. Lost a lot o' people. There was a pal o' mine - Keenser, his name was. We grew up together, and our first fight in th' trenches a stray bullet went right through his heart." His voice shakes a little, and he draws away from the Russian to put his hands on either side of the younger man's face. "Death is cruel, lad. Promise me ye'll live." An illogical statement, but Chekov nods anyway.

"I promise." And then, because he is exhausted from fighting and crying, and because Scotty is so kind and he's somehow beautiful in the firelight, he leans forward and presses a featherlight kiss to the other man's cheek.

Scotty freezes, and Chekov barely has time to feel icy dread that maybe he's done something wrong when he smiles and says gently, "I'll hold you to that promise."

That night, lying in his bedroll as he did barely twenty-four hours ago, Chekov sleeps. He's lost a friend that day, but he'll live.

He's made a promise.

 **Reviews make this Trash Can happy. Happy trash is productive trash.**


	4. Dance with me, talk to me

**So this is kinda late, but it makes up for it by being (very) short 'n' sweet. Pure fluff, both Spirk and Scotty/Chekov.**

 **Disclaimer: you and I both know that if I owned Star Trek, I wouldn't be sitting here writing shitty fanfic about it.**

"Do you have any siblings? Any brothers or sisters?"

Chekov and Scotty are on guard. Again. For whatever reason, Captain Kirk was antsy about the relative ease with which they took the village - after all, it was strategically important, and the fact that a single company on a suicide mission had taken it was worrying. As a precaution, then, he had guards posted night and day.

For Chekov and Scotty, this mostly means freezing their arses off for several hours and discovering exactly how boring landscape can be. To entertain themselves, they talk.

In response to Scotty's question, Chekov shakes his head. "Nyet. Just me and my mama and papa. You?"

Scotty snorts. "Do I have any siblings, he asks! I'm the oldest o' _twelve,_ I'll have you know."

"Twelve?! So many. What are they all like?"

As he listens to Scotty's account of his siblings, who all seem to be simultaneously the best and the worst people ever, Chekov realises he's happy - happy to be here, happy, somehow, to be freezing cold and staring at an impossibly boring landscape and just hearing Scotty drone on about the time his littlest sister nearly ate a frog.

He wonders why this is, and why he's thinking about the tiny kiss he gave the Scotsman and how funny he felt afterwards. He wonders plenty of things.

"We're here, because we're here, because we're here, because we're _heeeeerrreeee..._ "

Kirk watches his soldiers carousing in the square, singing in a drunken warble and dancing with some of the local girls. It's approaching Christmas, and with no action from the Romulans for weeks, he's beginning to relax.

First Officer Spock, on the other hand...

Jim nudges the other playfully. "Why the long face, Spock?"

Wrinkling his nose at the metaphor, Spock gestures towards the soldiers. "I am simply wondering if it is wise to allow the men to engage in this behaviour, Captain. Would it not be more prudent to order them to refrain for drinking?"

Below, someone has found an accordion and plays a lively tune, accompanied by their resident Scotsman on the bagpipes. Kirk laughs.

"C'mon, Spock. It's near Christmas time and the Romulans haven't shown their faces since we captured this place. Let them have fun." He takes his first officer's hand, smiling softly. "Anyway, there's music on, and it's been ages since we danced together."

Spock puts his free hand on Jim's waist, raising a slanted eyebrow. "Would it not be wiser to dance away from the window? The men might see."

Jim shrugs. "Let 'em talk. I mean, it's not as if we're subtle about this anyhow."

Chekov is at the stage of drunkenness when everything seems soft and pleasant and there's no such thing as a bad idea. So it seems perfectly reasonable, when Scotty has put his bagpipes away and the others are too drunk to focus on anything other than the face in front of theirs, to ask him to dance.

Scotty, for his part, is too surprised by the request to do anything other than nod, so it's his own fault, he thinks, that he's now slow-dancing around the square with a bubbly drunken Russian in his arms. Chekov is tantalisingly close, and Scotty avoids looking him directly in the eyes, choosing instead to watch their feet shuffle across the cold earth.

The boy leans in so close that Scotty can feel his breath warming the side of his face and smell the vodka. "Y...you know, Meester Scott..." he slurs. "You are lovely. You know that?"

Scotty flushes. "Oh. Thank you, I guess."

Chekov leans in until their noses are almost touching. "Nyet. You do not understand what I mean! You are _lovely_."

He's definitely drunk, far drunker than Scotty thought he was. "Let's get you tae bed, lad. It's late, an' we've got patrol tomorrow."

"I will go to bed, da. But you understand that you are lovely?"

Scotty starts walking him back towards the barracks. "Yes, yes, an' I thank you for the compliment. Nice to see _someone_ appreciates me around here," he quips.

When they get to Chekov's bunk, Scotty manages to get the boy's boots off and him under the covers without disturbing the other, wiser sleepers. He turns to go, but Chekov grabs his jacket and yanks him down, so that they're lying chest to chest on the bed. He looks hard at Scotty. "You are _lovely,"_ he whispers, and kisses him on the nose before releasing him.

Scotty stands, looks around once to ensure that nobody witnessed what had just happened, and practically runs off.

He needs to clear his head, or rather cloud it. He needs a drink.

 **Review, please? :3**


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